All posts tagged asia

Egyptian authorities earlier this year arrested three scuba divers trying to cut an internet cable off the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, an incident that caused data speeds to slow between Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

The motive behind the sabotage was never made clear, but deliberate or accidental undersea cable cuts are not uncommon in the region: A fact that has prompted four Persian Gulf telcos to club together to create a regional overland cable.

The new cable will link Kuwait with the United Arab Emirates, and potentially connect Europe and India to improve internet speeds and reliability of access.

“It’s completely terrestrial and is a completely diverse path to all the submarine cables that currently exist,” says Mahesh Jaishankar, a vice president at Du. “Cables that connect the GCC today go through the sea so they connect through the Gulf, through the strait of Hormuz, which are prone to cuts. This one avoids that. And will hopefully be a faster channel to Europe than the current ones.” Read More »

The appointment of Alex Thursby as the new chief executive of National Bank of Abu Dhabi, the U.A.E.’s largest lender by market value, might signal an acceleration of the bank’s push into Asia and other international markets as it contends with crowding in the banking sector locally.

NBAD opened offices in Malaysia and mainland China last year, following its establishment of a Hong Kong presence in 2009. It wants to have a foothold in more than 40 countries by 2021, and plans to set up in South Korea, India, Turkey, Lebanon, South Sudan, Brazil and Iraq this year and next, according to an investor presentation from February. Read More »